The Last Reunion
by Velgamidragon
Summary: Oneshot. Kudo was fighting the last battle against the Organization, and Haibara had come down to the basement where Gin had fallen to confirm whether he was alive or dead. It was beyond risky and stupid of her to search for him in the dark with her child body, but if there was a chance she might finally be free of Gin's hold on her, she would take that risk.


**Author's Note: Been a very long time since I last wrote a Case Closed/Detective Conan fanfic (I'm still not completely pleased with that one, but I don't suppose it's that bad; I've written worse). My interest seems to renew every couple years, which works out very well for Detective Conan because it means I get to skip a ton of filler episodes and get straight to the plot. My latest update included watching Movie 20: Darkest Nightmare and ooh, what a treat I received! Gin was as gorgeously evil as usual and I was very happy.  
**

 **So there are a ton of fanfics that detail the fall of the Black Organization, of course, but I only wanted to focus on what would be a very small part. Namely, I was thinking about what would become of Gin. Gin might not be the boss of the Organization, but _he_ is the face of the Organization, having been around since the first episode and proving himself to be a formidable adversary for Shinichi. I simply cannot imagine him being arrested. Everyone else in the Organization, yes, but not Gin. Gin, I imagine, would either be killed by someone or commit suicide before he could be brought in.**

 **GinSherry is also my guilty pleasure ship from this series. There is _something_ between them, though I have no idea _what_ and we've known this since episode 176-178.**

 **Episode 871 just came out this Saturday.**

 **695ish episodes later and we _still_ don't know anything more than that! So frustrating. Any way, judging by his words and her reactions, I doubt the relationship was a healthy one, so I attempted to portray it as such.**

 **Disclaimer: Gosho Aoyama-sama is the creator of Detective Conan and I'm simply messing around with some of his characters _that he absolutely refuses to go into more detail on their personal backgrounds for at least another 500 episodes (Who's bitter? I'm not bitter. You're bitter). And Bakura thought he had it bad having to wait about 200 episodes to become a main character._**

* * *

 _ **The Last Reunion**_

A single stream of light broke through the omnipresent darkness and slow, even footsteps suggested a calm, walking pace that belonged to a person with a short stride. The bearer of this glimmer of light was a little girl about six or seven years old with unusual reddish-brown hair, even for a person of mixed Japanese descent. Though her body was so young, her greenish-blue eyes belonged to those of someone at least ten years older, and not just in the figurative sense. She currently went by the name Ai Haibara, though her real name was Shiho Miyano. However, she had not gone by her real name since she was eighteen and had worked as the Head Research Scientist for a secretive and dangerous crime syndicate, the Black Organization, where she was known as Sherry. She had refused to work for them any longer after they had killed her older sister and she had miraculously managed to escape with her life by means of a rare side-effect in a poison she had been in the process of creating. With her adult mind intact and her body that of a child, she had fled and hidden herself away from them, escaping several near-fatal encounters in the process. She did not have Kudo's strong sense of justice or bold courage that caused him to pursue the Black Organization; she merely wanted to keep herself hidden and in doing so, protect those who had become dear to her.

Yet here she was, descending stairs to the ruined basement of a tall skyscraper that had ended up being the headquarters and residence of 'that person', the boss of the Organization. Kudo was somewhere several stories up and far enough away that she could hear no hint of the battle she knew he _must_ be fighting.

Irrational panic had sent her after him long after his own arrival, despite knowing she wouldn't be able to help in the slightest, but just as she'd entered into the building, the building shook and the floor above exploded with the force of a massive bomb, the color indicating C4 as the source and the earthquake-like vibrations suggesting the above floor held some kind of C4 storage space. Ceiling, supports, and everything else crashed like meteors to the ground and the weight and force was such that not even the ground floor could support the weight. She had desperately clung to the doorframe for support as the ground floor groaned and caved-in like a sinkhole opening up into the abyss. And she had watched with fascinated horror as she saw two terrifyingly familiar someones falling straight through that gaping hole. The platinum blond-haired woman was definitely dead to judge from the bleeding bullet wound in the center of her forehead. The other was definitely _not_ and Haibara had remained staring at the spot that person had disappeared with her hands gripping the doorway long after the building's tremors had stopped. Eventually, she shook herself from her stupor and looked up, to somewhere up there where Kudo was fighting the Organization, and then looked back down. She had searched for the stairs and then begun her descent into the darkness once more.

Haibara finally reached the basement floor and she used her watch light to look around. It was surprisingly deep down for a basement and appeared to have been another type of storage location, like a warehouse almost, before two ceilings had collapsed on everything. She could not explain, even to herself, why she had chosen to come down here instead of going after Kudo. She did not know what had become of the person who had fallen and that was far more dangerous, especially given who it had been. If he had survived and was relatively uninjured, which was incredibly likely, then she was probably walking into a quickly-planned trap and would pay for her folly with her life. It seemed he had finally killed Vermouth though, so she wouldn't run into _her_ as well. He'd always wanted to; he hated her immensely, but she briefly wondered what the woman had done to warrant it. He would not have killed _her_ , the Boss's favorite, without good reason. Then she decided she didn't care enough and continued her dangerous search. But if he hadn't survived or was too injured… thinking that way about him of all people seemed too strange. But then… that look in his eyes when he'd fallen through to the basement… it wasn't something she'd ever seen on his face before. She didn't think he could make that kind of face.

That was, perhaps, the crux of why she was here in the basement of the Boss's residence searching among debris and wreckage while a firefight was taking place upstairs. The idea of not knowing what had become of him was far more unsettling that she ever would have expected. She had to know if he was alive or dead even if it killed her. Kudo was fighting the last battle against the Organization, and Haibara had come down to the basement where he had fallen to just to confirm that. It was beyond risky and stupid of her to search for him in the dark with her child body, but if there was a chance she might finally be free of his hold on her, she would take that risk. She pushed deeper in, peering around corners and shining her light into dark spaces. Haibara knew her light was a potential beacon indicating her position, but she was trusting the limited sightlines would give her a bit of protection at least as long as she was cautious.

It was after several minutes of fruitless searching and crawling through tight spaces that something familiar caught her eye. Illuminated by her watch light and resting inconspicuously next to a wooden crate and some burnt wires was a Beretta M1934. Her breath caught in her throat at the sight of it. She quickly switched her light off and squeezed herself into a space between some broken concrete and a slab of drywall. When nothing lunged out at her from the darkness, she cautiously eased herself forward, still keeping her light off, and crawled towards the hand gun. Her right hand brushed against the grip and she flinched when it knocked into the nearby crate, but all was quiet. Haibara exhaled a deep breath and deliberately grabbed the Beretta. When _still_ nothing happened, she tentatively turned her watch light back on and stared down at the gleaming metal weapon that was very well-cared for, despite its age and the beating it must have taken on the way down. If the Beretta was here, then its owner could not be too far away, but the fact that it wasn't already _with_ its owner and she hadn't been killed for holding it was very worrisome indeed. How often had he told her that this gun was his life, an extension of his arm, and the instrument of his will? It was as much a part of him as his Porsche and his long hair and he would no sooner part from his gun than he would sell his car or cut short his ash-blond locks. His first priority would have been to retrieve it if he were able to.

Haibara made to stand up and start scouring every inch of the place when her common sense seemed to finally catch up with her. Why should she be worried about finding his weapon _here_ with no sign of him? If anything, this was as good thing; it meant he was in no position to lure her into any kind of trap, much less kill her. More importantly though, why should she be worried about him _at all?_ She couldn't rationalize it… but deep down, she knew the answer, even if she didn't want to admit it. This distracted her more than it should have as she continued her search, and perhaps that was why she was so startled when her watch light suddenly fell across the person in question she had been looking for. She could only see half of him; his body from the waist down was completely obscured from view by some heavy chunks of debris that had pinned him to the ground. Even so, that fine, long ash-blond hair was recognizable anywhere, even when it lay uncharacteristically askew about his prone form and some of it was matted with blood.

"Gin," she said quietly, almost to herself.

His eyes, those malevolent dark green eyes, opened and he turned his head towards her. His brow furrowed even more as he stared. "Sherry?" he said, but the confusion that colored his tone made it seem more like a question.

He had never seen her as Ai Haibara, never learned that the APTX-4869 poison had the potential ability to shrink adults into kids, and never figured out that Shinichi Kudo was alive as Conan Edogawa. Lucky for her. If he had learned any of those secrets, he'd have been able to piece everything together about her. That was just the kind of man he was. She nodded.

Gin's eyes widened a fraction and she imagined she could see him piecing everything together as she'd expected. He suddenly smirked and turned his head back to stare up at the non-existent ceiling. "So that's how you escaped the gas chamber back then," he said with smug triumph.

While of course it had no impact on his ability or desire to hunt her down, she could easily imagine how much it frustrated him not being able to figure out how she'd pulled it off.

"Why are you here, Sherry? In this place on this level? If I didn't know better, I'd think you were actually worried about me."

Haibara stiffened and crossed her arms, glaring at him. "I saw you fall. I only wanted to confirm whether you were alive or dead."

Gin gave a dry laugh, still not looking at her. "If I'd known something as simple as that would have brought you out of hiding, I might have done it sooner."

The implied threat sent a violent shudder down her spine, but Gin either didn't notice or didn't care. She had a hard time believing the former, but the latter didn't sound like him at all. Messing with her head was always something he enjoyed, whether he was physically present or not. Haibara let the watch light trail along what could be seen of his body. Blood was pooling from under his back and in her initial observation, she had missed the six-inch-wide metal beam, almost entirely hidden behind a slab of drywall, that had penetrated his abdominal cavity. Blood was oozing steadily from around the beam and staining his black coat red.

"You're dying," she said simply.

"Ah," he said. "The beam came in at an angle and severed my spine about here." Gin gestured vaguely with his right hand to a place further up closer to his ribs than the original point of entry. That also happened to be where the blood coming from him was thickest.

"I can't feel anything from about here down, though I'm certain my legs were crushed as well. I suppose you should be grateful I can't feel most of this, otherwise I would be incapable of making small talk with you. Looks as though you were wrong though." At her puzzled expression, he smirked and withdrew one of his cigarettes from the box she knew was in his coat pocket. "Weren't you always the one to say smoking would kill me first?"

"You smoked enough for that to be the case," Haibara said sharply as she watched him place the cigarette between his lips and light it with a match. She'd always casually wondered why he never used a lighter and even now, she found that question wandering in her mind. "I wouldn't be surprised if your heart and lungs were found to be as black as your coat in the autopsy if you get one."

"Not that black then," he said with a wry smile and gestured once more to his blood spilling out of him.

"You're incredibly calm about this," she remarked.

Gin shrugged, though she didn't miss the slight wince. "As much as 'that person' has searched otherwise, everyone dies sometime, Sherry, and not even you would be able to do anything to prevent this. That's the way it is in the Organization, but you already knew that. It's loyalty or death, and sometimes the price for loyalty is also death. That was something you couldn't accept, so you ran, but I have no such weakness. The only ones who should kill are those who are prepared to be killed."

"Where did you get that from?" Haibara asked. The sentiment sounded like something he might believe, but the words themselves didn't sound like him at all. Too justice-like.

"Don't know. It wasn't relevant. Well, I imagine your morbid curiosity must be well-sated. I'll probably be dead within the next fifteen minutes at most unless you decide to break character and either pull out the beam and hasten my blood loss or shoot me in the head with my own Beretta."

"I won't kill you," she said coolly.

Gin's eyes glittered maliciously. "No, that's not your style. Tell me, do you still feel guilty for all the deaths you caused with your poisons?"

Her heart seized up with fright and she took an involuntary step back before she even realized it. Gin laughed darkly at her fearful reaction, though it sounded strained. "Ah, this must be a glorious moment for you, Sherry. Unless you're stupid enough to come within arm's reach or toss me my gun, I can only hurt you with words and in less than fifteen minutes, you will be rid of the source of one of your greatest fears. Is that not cause for celebration?"

"Why would I celebrate something like that?" she snapped, then immediately regretted it because Gin had turned those unnerving green eyes onto her and she didn't like the way he was looking at her.

" _Careful_ , Sherry," he purred, and just like that, the atmosphere around them changed to something more intense and all too familiar. "One might think you'll actually miss me when I'm gone."

Haibara frowned, trying not to let him see how his words affected her. Sure, he couldn't _physically_ hurt her anymore, but that was only _half_ the danger involved with him. His mind was just as lethal a weapon as his gun. "For my own peace of mind and the safety of everyone around me, I will be very glad when you're dead," she said at last. "But to think that I would celebrate it? Then you clearly don't know me as well as you think you do."

"On the contrary, if that's the _only_ thing I've gotten wrong in the entire time I've known you, then I might have known you better than your own sister."

"Don't talk about her!" she screamed suddenly and her voice echoed eerily about the room. Gin looked completely unfazed, if not a little amused.

"Touched a nerve, have I, Sherry?" he asked with a mocking smile.

Haibara's fists and voice shook with anger, "You dare…! You dare compare…! You who-!"

"-Killed her? Ah. And I did it because I could, because I knew it would incense you. I _know_ you, Sherry. I know your habits and your beliefs and what angers, pleases, and terrifies you. I could rip into your very soul with words alone and you know this. So the real question, my dear, is why haven't you left already? You have already confirmed my journey to the world beyond or do you intend to hold a silent vigil for my deathbed until I've breathed my last?"

"Do you _want_ me to leave? I can do that if you'd prefer to die alone in the dark," she said testily.

"So defensive," Gin said with a chuckle that dissolved into a cough. Incredibly, he didn't lose the cigarette in the process, but now blood covered his chin and a thin trail of it was marking its way down his unusually pale face from the corner of his mouth. "No, I'm enjoying your company immensely, as I always have. It's you who's behaving strangely. For whatever reason, you have no motivation to leave, despite the lack of a need to stay. Is it pity? No, you know better with me."

" _He's doing it again,"_ she realized with a jolt of horror, even as her traitorous heart fluttered with remembrance.

In many ways, his mind was very much like Kudo's, able to pick up on small and abstract details and use them to form a clear, coherent picture of a situation. It wasn't until… about six months before her sister was killed that he had started speaking those thoughts aloud as he worked out a problem if it was just the two of them and _only_ the two of them. Not even Vodka had been privy to hear him thinking aloud on a regular basis as she had. The abrupt silence that fell startled her out of her thoughts and she found his gaze still fixed upon her like a watchful hawk.

He resumed speaking slowly and those eyes revealed nothing of his emotions. "You sought me out when you saw me fall and claimed it was to determine if I was alive or dead. But, you risked seeking me out in that form with the 50% possibility that I was still alive and unharmed, readily able to kill you. That doesn't fit your style, Sherry. Like me, you've always been a cautious one. Upon finding me and confirming my state, you still stayed even when I intentionally upset you and toyed with your emotions to see what you would do. Your emotional reactions have been what I expected, but still you've stayed which does not fit your normal pattern. Even mentioning your sister hasn't caused you to leave. Why is that, I wonder?"

Haibara resisted the urge to bite her lip or avert her eyes. She knew why, the _real_ reason why, and she hated herself for it. He would figure it out soon enough; it was inevitable. It was as he said; he knew her too well and she'd never been able to keep anything a secret from him for long. The only exception was her secret identity as Ai Haibara and it was genuinely shocking that he'd never discovered it before now. Something shifted behind those dark green eyes and her heart sank. He knew.

"Don't tell me…" Gin said, his predatory grin splitting his face and amusement coloring his voice. "… you're actually here because of some misplaced sense of longing? Or regret? After all this time and all that I've done that you hate and fear me for, you still keep coming back to me. Heh, how well I trained you, but you should know better, Sherry. As young as you are, I did not take you to be stupid, but then I suppose if you weren't a _little_ foolish, you wouldn't have betrayed the Organization."

He might have stabbed her with a knife for how much her heart hurt from his words, and then she wondered what she had expected. Gin was cold and callous and any sign of weakness was a weapon he could use and turn against someone, be they ally or enemy. He had always been this way, so why would she expect otherwise just because he was dying and she was being unwisely sentimental? Even so… even so, his careless disregard for her feelings was a bitter pill to swallow and it somehow hurt her differently, if not worse, than his casual mention of killing her sister.

"I loved you, Gin," Haibara said, and she was pleased that there was no tremor of emotion in her voice as she finally spoke the ugly, horrible truth she'd denied to herself for years.

Gin sighed heavily and a large cloud of cigarette smoke escaped his lips. He didn't seem remotely surprised by her declaration. " _Sherry,_ at least be honest with yourself if no-one else."

"For the first time, I am," she said grimly.

"Hmph. Maybe, you are, but it wasn't love you felt," he said and he was back to looking at the broken ceiling far above, his voice losing some of its icy edge again. "You were only fifteen when I took you and broke you into womanhood. I awoke your awareness of a little-explored part of yourself, and so you discovered your new adult body through me, a task I was more than willing to assist in." He glanced back at her out of the corner of his eye, looking strangely somber. "You were too young to recognize the difference between your physical and emotional feelings towards me, so now what you remember from that time is an entangled mess that undoubtedly _feels_ like love to someone as naïve as you. But I promise you, Sherry; that's not love."

"Does it matter what it actually _is_ as long as that's what it felt like to _me_?" she demanded harshly and was horrified to feel the corners of her eyes beginning to sting. Oh no. Nonono, she was _not_ about to _cry_ in front of _him_. "At least I felt _something_ for you; did you even feel that much for me, or was I just another stupid little girl for you to toy around with?"

Why did it matter? Why did it _matter_ to her at all?! There was- there was no _need_ for it! Whether he'd felt anything more than sick satisfaction at manipulating the tender-hearted emotions of a fifteen-year-old girl was _not_ something she needed to hear!

Gin gave her an appraising look and smirked. "Are you so desperate to find out that you'd risk coming over here if I asked you to as payment?" he asked in a low voice.

Haibara's eyes narrowed. "I said 'loved', past tense," she said icily.

This only seemed to amuse him further. "Good girl," he said with an approving nod. "Can't say I see why it matters to you so much, but women will be women. You were my favorite, Sherry; I can say that much with certainty, but what I felt for you was too complex to be described so simply. It was not 'love' as you or anyone else would recognize it, but in my own unusual, strangely perverted way, I suppose I did love you."

He removed the cigarette at last, but held onto it between his fingers. His face was even paler due to blood loss and his breathing was shallower too, but his green eyes were dancing with mirth. "Is that what you wanted to hear? Do you think my confession will give you closure on your feelings?" Gin chuckled and shook his head slowly. "Oh no, Sherry, that's not how it works," he sighed. "Dead your feelings may be, but you'll wonder about might-have-beens. You'll move on, but you'll never forget me. I have engraved myself deep into your skin and down into your soul where you have no hope of ever ridding yourself of me. That is the cost you will pay for your treachery to the Organization and I."

With his free hand, he wiped at some of the blood pooling out of the wound in his abdomen and lifted it back up toward his face to stare at the bright red color. "At least I got to see you and your favorite color even though the blood isn't yours."

He suddenly released a shuddering gasp and laid his hand upon his chest while the other one holding the cigarette stretched out to his side. Gin lay still like that for a while and did not seem inclined to speak further, while Haibara couldn't think of anything more to say. She merely stood and watched the slight rise and fall of his chest.

"Can't see so well anymore," he said at last, and it was incredible how much hoarser his voice had gotten after just a few short minutes. "Everything's becoming all dark and blurred. Guess I won't be around much longer now. I'll see you later, Sherry."

Haibara sighed deeply. "So it would seem. Rest in peace, Gin. Eternal peace."

He gave her a peculiar stare and then he smiled. It wasn't his normal smile either; it seemed rather self-depreciating. It looked odd on him and she wanted him to stop it. "Where I'm going? Not likely."

His breath hitched in his throat all of a sudden and his eyes went wide for only a moment before they slackened. In fact, his whole body relaxed and his chest did not rise again. Haibara counted out thirty seconds before looking down at her watch.

Her lips quirked into a half-smile that didn't reach her eyes. "Figures. Even dying you still manage to disappoint me. You promised less than fifteen minutes, and you stayed alive for sixteen."

She glanced back at Gin's now-lifeless form one last time, then turned around and slowly picked her way back out of the basement without another word.

* * *

 _I have a peculiar fancy for remembering lines from various sources and wanting to use them as lines for other characters. I did that at least three times in this._

 _"The only ones who should kill are those who are prepared to be killed." This is a direct quote from Lelouch vi Britannia in Code Geass. No, I don't mean to imply that **Gin** got the quote from there, but I liked the line._

 _"..._ _but in my own unusual, strangely perverted way, I suppose I did love you." This is not a direct quote, both intentionally and not. It's been a long time since I heard the line, but Lex Luthor from the first season of The Superman Adventures of Lois and Clark (or something like that) said a line somewhat like that in regards to Lois. And when he said 'perverted', I think he rather meant 'perversion', not 'dirty-minded'.  
_

 _"_ _Rest in peace, Gin. Eternal peace." Replace Gin's name with Sherry's, and you have the exact line that Gin murmured as he fired a sniper rifle at 'her' (it was actually Sonoko's) head in Movie 5: Countdown to Heaven. That's why he gives her the peculiar stare.  
_

 _Yes, I had Gin kill Vermouth. It seems very likely to me that if a final battle with the Black Organization ever comes about, Vermouth will probably be killed in an attempt to protect either Shinichi or Ran, depending on how things pan out. It doesn't seem far-fetched and of course, Gin wouldn't stand for such a blatant betrayal of the Organization..  
_


End file.
